All That We'd Lost
by CrazyWriter
Summary: ***FINISHED*** Could they ever recover all that they'd lost... THE NIGHT MALLORY DIED? READ AND REVIEW!
1. Chapter 1

_A STORY I WROTE WITH MY BFF DANIELLE!!! PLEASE READ AND REVIEW!!!_

All That We'd Lost

I gasp as I turn around in my kitchen. There stands Mary Anne, who came in, with an 8 month belly on her. Not something we'd ever have thought to see on the 16 year old Mary Anne when we were younger, along with the nose piercing and several tattoos.

I open my mouth to speak but her sharp voice cut me off. "Don't even try, Stacey," she snarls. "I know who I am and I know what I've done. You can't make me feel any worse." I stay silent because I didn't want to make her feel worse... I wanted to love her.

So much had changed. And not for the better. I was deep in the grasp of unrequited love for Mary Anne, Dawn was in California and living on the streets. And then there were Claudia and Kristy. Two of the upper crust at our school, who never deigned to speak to the rest of us.

I don't know where everything had gone wrong. It wasn't any of our faults. Sometimes lives converge in such an awful way and we're all suddenly standing over Mallory's grave... each of us blaming another. I suddenly begin to cry, Mallory a symbol of all that we'd lost: youth, innocence, trust and love.

Mary Anne scoffs in disgust. "Always so weepy, aren't you?" she snaps. I remember Mallory's funeral was the last time I saw her cry... and without a bottle. There were so many bottles on the night Mallory died, so many shattering noises... the bottles, the cars... Mallory's spine.

Mary Anne looks away in disgust and then gasps, clutching her belly. "I think the baby's coming now! Call Pete Black and Logan, one of them's the father."

I rush to the phone, putting aside my own pain. I call Pete and Logan... and Austin, for good measure. But none of them answer. Two of them have changed their numbers, no doubt to avoid paternity suits. I sigh and dial the number of the man I know is the true father: Jeff Schaefer. After his message, I call for an ambulance. As we ride over together, my thoughts go back to that awful night. How ironic that Mary Anne would be giving birth at the hospital where Mallory died and Jessie now lived, confined to a wheelchair... never to dance again.

Ah, Jessie. Just for a few seconds, I allow myself to think of her. She'd been shut off in her own little world for months, not speaking. Just staring off into space and sometimes humming a few fragments of Sleeping Beauty or Coppelia. Jessie used to dance across stage like a magical air fairy. And now, now, she only dances in the confines of her own mind.

But at least she has her mind. I wonder how mine will last as I hold the hand of the only woman I can ever love as she gives birth to someone else's child. Why does she give away to so many what I long to have for my very own? But then, can't one say the same about me? I've given into sin so many times and betrayed the core essence of eternal love. Kristy may be in the uppercrust at school but there is one time she talks to me... late at night, when she wants to come over. That's all I'm good for. But it would show her if she knew I longed to whisper Mary Anne as I gasped into her chocolate tresses.

I shook myself out of my thoughts. Whether she loves me or not, Mary Anne needs me now. I grasp her hands as she pants in the ambulance. Who knows. This may be the only time I ever get to hold it.

We get to the hospital and are rushed to an operating room. The doctor shouts orders at the chaos and nurses run to do his bidding. Mary Anne finally pants and gasps while a baby is born. She smiles down at her little girl. But before she can move to touch it, the nurses hold her back. "Remember," one whispers kindly in her ear. "You're having triplets."

Slowly, Mary Anne births each little Miracle into the world. Two girls, one boy in total. I bitterly think to myself "Now each potential father can have one."

But she smiles with tears in her eyes and she looks up at me. She says, "My little Anastasia, my little Elizabeth and my little McGill. They're all for you Stacey. I've always loved you."

At first I think this will just be until the drugs wear off, but then I see an honesty I've never felt before shining in her tear-filled eyes. "Oh, Mary Anne," I whisper. "Can we name the boy Jesse instead of McGill... I don't want him to get teased." Of course I would say something so awkward and dumb after this, but Mary Anne just smiles. She understands me.

"Of course, my love." And since words have failed me, I lean in and kiss her. That works.


	2. Chapter 2

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**The Closest Thing**

I found out from a friend. My own stepsister gave birth and never called. No one in my family called. I suppose it shouldn't hurt so much... it's not like I have a regular phone number. At least, not one I answer. Shannon fields my calls. He's good for that.

And for other things...Finding a fix for me or his other girls comes to mind. I never would have guessed just three years ago that I would end up here, on a dirty Californian street wearing a hooker get up that would make Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman" look good.

Of course, who would have guessed that rich, snobbish Shannon Kilborn would have ended up a male pimp instead of some sweet trophy wife. But everything changed after Mallory died and we all found who we really were. Shannon came to terms with her... his gender identity disorder and I came to terms with the fact that I'd never be more than a drug-riddled whore, roving the streets of LA, thankful for the protection of Shannon's stable.

I know that Mallory wouldn't have wanted to see me this way, but she's dead and no one sees anything when they're gone and buried. She's the one that left us, after all.

And who else is going to look at street trash like me? I hear the other girls are back living their normal teenybopper lives... except for the Mary Anne getting knocked up by some guy and raising triplets with Stacy. But I only know that because Shannon still keeps in touch with the gossip back in Connecticut. Of course, he can. I can't. Like I said, no one talks to street trash. ... But I think Mallory, with her kind heart, who knew what it was like to be on the periphery, for wasn't she the awkward one in middle school? I suppose the BSC was our stable of protection back then.

Now I'm the awkward one. The only people who look at me are those looking to pay for me. And they don't even look at me. Do they notice that my blonde hair, once so fair and fine, is now straggly and cut raggedly? They don't know that I used to only eat healthy foods like soy and broccoli shakes. But now, now I rarely eat. So much has changed.

The old members of the BSC must be thrilled over the new children... new babysitting charges. Ha, to think I used to love new clients... now I wonder what sick fetishes I'll be performing. But it's not so bad. I don't feel much. The needle saves me from sensation. The sweet fine powders I pack into it are my friends now. Heroin. Cocaine. Even Xanax in a pinch. The other girls in the stable aren't my friends... I could never let them see me cry, unless I wanted to get beat up and my night's earnings stolen. But maybe not. They fear me, even if they make fun of me. They know I'm Daddy Shannon's favorite.

I'm sure that people wonder how I ended up here. So do I. Although, really it can all be traced back to the night that Mallory died. So many things shattered our hopes, our dreams. I swear that I didn't know that the vodka I swiped for the BSC club sleepover would turn out like this...The screwdrivers and shots into needles. Every night while I jab the needle into me things get erased...The things I do, Mallory's screams, Claudia's accusations.

Funny how she accused me when it's that bitch's fault to begin with. We all saw Claudia's addiction to sweets and bad clothing was quirky and funny in middle school... but once sweets gave way to a little boozing, a little toke of weed here or there, well, that's when things got bad. Of course, no one knows but our little former clique. Claudia is queen bee of the school. She wears her coke habit a bit more functionally than I do. I sigh and head back to the dirty apartment I share with Shannon and the girls.

This is it. This is what my life is like. I don't know what I can do to change it...Call Jeff? Call Dad? Mom and Richard gave up on me after just a few months. I don't even know if I want to change anything...If I keep going this way soon I won't have to worry about changing or seeing anything at all.

I'm the first one home, so it's just Shannon sitting there, stretched out on the sofa like he's king of the world... but I guess he is the king of our world. I always smile when I see him, because even with what we made our lives into, he's a reminder of days past. He didn't even have to change his name. "Hey, lady" he says as I walk in and pats the couch next to him. "Come here."

I move across the room to him and sit down. "Daddy, I need to talk to you about something." I take a deep breath. "I want to stay clean."

And I do want that... I want to be clean so that Mary Anne's babies can have an aunt... a favorite aunt even.

Shannon just stares at me. I've never expressed any interest in being clean, just the opposite in fact. But he's not staring. He's calculating. Shannon is a good pimp because he's so smart... that private school education had some benefit. He knows that he might not be able to control me without the needle. I might decide to get a job... I could waitress, maybe? Get my GED? Maybe Mary Anne needs a nanny... no. I can't go home until I'm respectable... until I'm favorite aunt material. "I want to stay clean," I repeat. "I don't want to stop being with you, baby, I just don't want the drugs... I want to see Mary Anne's kids."

He thinks some more...I see the signs that he's going to say no and move quickly, "Please, baby. Remember what it was like when I was clean?" Although Shannon doesn't really like to think too much of Stoney Brook, I know that there were parts of his life that he loved and misses. Who knows? Maybe a clean Dawn was one of those things.

"Baby," he says slowly, his voice so rich and deep now that the hormones have altered it. "It's your choice but... I just... I worry about you. I mean, you know we've got to stay in this business to pay rent and eat and well... could you do this without the drugs? I don't want to see you destroyed... The coke is like a shield around your soul... I love your soul."

I smile tremulously and look into his eyes. "I can do it, baby, as long as you're with me...I just, I just want to see my nieces and nephew and know that I'm there for them if they need me. I can do that if I'm clean."

"Baby, even if you're clean, could you go back? I mean... I know you want to but... No one called you, Dawn. No one asked you to come." His words cut through me like a fresh razor blade, cutting open soul scars I'd forgotten I had, thought they'd healed, but they hadn't. He's right. No one wanted me to come.

I stare at him for a few seconds then I get up and leave the room. There's only one thing I can do. I need to call Stoney Brook. I need to call Mary Anne and Stacey. I take a deep breath and take out my cell...It's got two numbers on it, Shannon's and Mary Anne's, the only two I could remember after years of frying my brain like an egg. I take a deep breath and hit her number.

"Hello," I croaked into the phone when it was picked up. "Dawnie?" Mary Anne's voice sounded incredulous. "Yeah, I heard that you had your babies and I just wanted to call and see how you were..." "Oh, Dawn. They're so beautiful. I'm so good. I love Stacey...But where are you?!"

"I'm..." My voice stumbles. "I'm in California."

"Dawn, what are you doing out there? Are you still with..." She can't keep the disgust from her voice. "Shannon?"

'I love him, Mary Anne. And we're doing real good. I'm a waitress now and Shannon works in sales." Not a lie. I serve men a nice piece of ass and Shannon does sell... well, me. The half-truths and embellishments fall easily from tongue. "We have the cutest apartment. Our bedroom is blue. We're saving up to come see everyone."

"Sister, you don't have to lie to me. You know I can tell when you lie. Look. If you want a place to live where you can get clean, you can come to our house...Mom and Richard fixed up the barn really nice for the babies and me. You can stay with us. But you've got to leave the life behind you." What do I do? I love Shannon but am sick of the drugs. And although I know he loves me too, I'm not convinced that he really wants a clean Dawn.

Still this is the only life I know. I was always stubborn. Funny how back then it was for animal rights and now it's because I don't know how to stop letting men three times my age pound me like nail. I don't want to be a charity case on my teen mother sister, back in small town New England, all eyes judging me. There goes the whore, they'd whisper. "I'm not lying!" I say vehemently. "I'm clean now. We're thinking of moving, to get away from our past."

Mary Anne just sighs on the other end. I shouldn't have called.

Maybe there's one other option. I love Shannon and I love Mary Anne, but what about Dawn? Do I love her too? What would I do to love her again. I take a deep breath and start walking. I've got enough money in a hiding place that I started just in case Shannon withheld my fix.

I walk right past Shannon, through the living room, to the door to our apartment. He doesn't stop me. I hold the door knob. I stand there for a minute. Two. Three. I feel so numb… I wonder if this is how Jessie feels, confined to her wheeled prison. I wonder what it would be like if I was the one who would never walk again? Why didn't I pick that car to be in? Why couldn't the Junkbucket have been my chariot to a comatose cocoon of serenity? But that's just a fantasy. This is my life. This is real. I turn around.

The cell phone's still in my hand. "Mary Anne?' But she's hung up.

I walk over to Shannon. The needle's sitting next to him, filled with my little bit of salvation. I pick it up and jab it into me, between my fingers, so the johns won't complain about my marred flesh.

Shannon doesn't say anything as I push the plunger. I pull it out once it's empty and set it down. I lean over and kiss him. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't judge me. He accepts it.

I think that's the closest thing I'll ever find to love.


	3. Chapter 3

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_**So Much Changes And So Much Stays The Same**_

I look out the window and wonder where everyone is...My old friends, my family and most of all...Where is Andrew?

I don't have these thoughts very often... that's a lie. I have them all the time, I just usually push them aside. It's not easy having to be happy all the time when your insides are being torn apart every single moment. I stare melancholy at the dripping rain. A lot of people know me, are my friends, but no one is my real friend. They only hang out with me because Claudia has kept me so close and she is their greatest social desire.

I understand why we're still friends, we've been friends since babyhood. We share so many secrets. She knows all of mine...Those that no one knows.

She knows that it's not Andrew's kidnapping that makes me so upset. It was more everything I lost because Watson's ex-wife decided to play hardball and snatch the kids during a heated custody battle. My life was perfect back in the days of the BSC. I had a family. What Karen used to call the Big House was finally a home. And then it all crashing down, like an avalanche, like a house of cards, like straw man.

One day, Karen and Andrew announced that they wanted to spend the school year with us and just the summer with their mother, as did some of their friends. It was really a sensible plan, since we lived much closer to their school and their had accepted a new job which involved more work. It was true that often they were home alone and ate Kids Cuisine in front of the TV. They just wanted more human contact.

The court battle went on for a few months. Her new job had given her the money to fund a team of lawyers to match Watson's. But it was becoming clear that our house, with Nanny's ever watchful eye, with big family dinners, with time to talk, was going to win. And then one day, the police came by with Karen. Her mother had tried to fly them to Abu-Dhabi, and although Karen had escaped, their mother and Andrew were long-gone.

I will never forget the look on Watson's face on that day. He embraced Karen and then just overflowed into tears. That was the true day that everything changed. Watson began to spend days, weeks, months traveling the globe, always one step behind his query. Once, he got a phone call from Andrew but it was slammed down before it could be traced. He refused to ever change his cell number after that. He and my mother began to talk less. She'd try to talk it out, but he kept saying it was useless, everything would be fine once he found Andrew. They'd go back to normal. They'd love each other like they used to.

It was too much for her, I guess. She'd always been a fighter, a warrior. When my father left, she just picked and went on. We were all her little soldiers and we knew our tasks. But Watson would never move on. Nigeria this week, the private investigators would tell him, but the next week it would Belgium. He was burning through his assets on his mad hunt. When he was home, he'd shut himself away. After a year of this, Mom left.

She tried her hardest to take Emily Michelle with her, but Watson refused. He'd lost one child, he said and he'd be damned if he lost anymore. No one could make him understand that it was no life for a child, traveling the globe for a couple weeks out of the month and then staying in a large mansion with only a hired nanny for company. We get her one weekend a month and a week in the summer. Karen chose to go to boarding school, away from the memories. Watson still sends money, believing once he finds Andrew, everything will resume. He won't sign the divorce papers.

It was about the time that Watson left our life that Stacey McGill entered mine in a big way. I was so messed up... me, assertive, well-rounded, born leader Kristy Thomas! But after all I'd been through, everything that had formed me, well the straw broke the camel's back. I couldn't handle it. Stacey was always there. She'd come over after school and stay until 10 pm, our curfew on weeknights. She listened to me. Let me cry. I was on my way to pulling it all back together. It was spring and I decided to reconvene the Krushers. My grades were going up. Life was settling down.

Then one day, she saw Mary Anne in a different way. Mary Anne had changed after Mal's accident. Maybe she thought if she scared people off by being pierced, tattooed and very promiscuous she'd never have to be close to anyone again. I guess that's just what it took for Stacey to fall hard. Stacey always loved a challenge and that's what Mary Anne had changed into. The biggest challenge of all.

Of course, this would happen after I'd all but fallen in love with Stacey... that's wishful thinking. I'd fallen in love with Stacey. She left and I found out what made my mother a warrior. And I would have fought too but the punches kept coming. David moved back to town and he and my mother started dating again. How could she do that? Date the man who'd left us... all of us? But she did. I wished every night that I could tell all of my feelings to Stacey but she wasn't there. Sure she still came by once a week or so. Mary Anne was with her sometimes. I couldn't stand to watch Mary Anne sneer at her and Stacey moon over her so I started hanging out with Claudia. Claudia was changed, but at least I could be around someone.

And every once in a while, she and I remembered things. We wouldn't talk, just be hanging out and getting ready for a party or something and you could tell that the both of us were thinking of the BSC or Bradford Court. Neither of us ever said anything, but it was always there.

I still saw Stacey sometimes. I learned from my warrior mother how to handle broken hearts. David would come around about ten at night. And when he and my mother found their way into the bedroom, I'd sneak out the window and throw rocks at Stacey's window. Not the most romantic way to lose your virginity, but love is for suckers, my mother was proof of that. I'd show up at Stacey's once in a while. She'd always let me in. But during the day, her eyes were on Mary Anne.

And to think, everyone thought the BSC would be thrilled about the new triplets.

Finally, I started trying to date again. Cokie Mason and I went out on a few dates but that would never work out. She just wasn't Stacey. It wasn't like I didn't have the opportunity to date other people. Claudia was the most popular girl in school and I was her best friend. Plus, I'd finally started dressing in something other than turtlenecks. I'm dating Alan Grey right now...It's not optimum, I mean he's not Stacey but it's better than nothing.

An orgasm is an orgasm. I was always efficient like that. Anyone who used the BSC would tell you that.

The rain starts to let up and I think, maybe I should go for a walk? Charlie is always harping on me to get fresh air. Poor Charlie. He graduated college and moved home to help mom out, just like back when we were kids and he was the head of the house. He hates David. We all do. I should walk. But where would I go? The nights I'm truly upset, I walk back to the old middle school playground. That's where it all happened for everyone else. It's there I relive the night Mallory died, in the place Mallory died. Everyone lost so much that night... their youth, innocence, a sense of place and belonging, dreams of a future, sense of community and security, love, and joy. But me? I lost nothing the night Mallory died. After Andrew and the tearing apart of my constellation within the universe, well, I had nothing more to lose.

Tonight I pass the playground and continue on past the old barn where Mary Anne, her babies and Stacey are sure to be. I don't feel as bad as I usually do when I think about it. After all, as I look up at the moon and stars, night time is the only time I feel hope.

Behind me an alleycat knocks of a bottle, causing it to shatter to the ground. I jump. Although I was less affected by losing Mallory, I still remember the sounds of the shattering. Sure, I wasn't the one behind the wheel of the junk bucket but... it was my car. I shouldn't have let someone drive it. I knew it only had one airbag. It's amazing how fast things happen when you're young. One moment, you're on top of the world, running a business in eighth grade, filled with love, and then you're a nobody watching their friends wrap a car around a pair of tetherball poles. I wonder if I should go home but Mom is sure to be fucking David's brains out... and they're not quiet. In the oldest days, I'd go to Mary Anne... in less old days, I'd go to Stacy. Now I can only go to Claudia and she's in New York with her boyfriend tonight, I could call her, but she'll be coked out. I have nowhere to go.

Or do I not? I creep closer to the barn where the young mothers live. Peeking inside the window, I see their beautiful babies... I hear one was named Jessie... poor Jessie. Perhaps I could be welcome as a friend, if not a lover? I break a twig with my foot. They turn. Terrified, not ready, I scamper off.

Suddenly I'm running... running... running... Before I know it, I've boarded a cross town bus. In ten minutes, I'm outside the house I shared with Watson and Mom and our family. I try the front door. It's not locked. I know no one's home. Watson's in Venezuela. Stealthy, like a cat, I climb the stairs my old room. I grab a picture of Emily, Karen, and Andrew off the hallway wall. I sit in the window, gazing at it, petting their once happy faces through the glass. I look up at my room. The furniture gone, but Watson never changed it. Some trinkets, wall hangings I left behind are still here. So much changes and so much stays the same. I start to cry as I gaze out at the moon in night sky again, this time even it gives me no hope. Charlie doesn't know what he's talking about… Walks are always a bad idea.


	4. Chapter 4

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_**My Mother's Darkness**_

I have six tattoos. Three of them are very new, but the other three are older. None of them really mean anything...I have a rose on my shoulder blade, a vine twining around my left arm and a tombstone on my ankle.

People always think tattoos mean something and they won't shut up until you give them some excuse. It's not the individual marks that mean something, it's the idea of a tattoo. For me they meant rebellion and sweet, sweet pain... and something permanent. I always wanted something that would be forever. I know enough about loss.

The biggest part of my life has always been about it, after all. I don't remember my mother. It's a hard thing to say, but I have no idea what she sounded like or what kind of perfume she liked to wear. You would've thought that was enough tragedy before I turned 15.

But apparently there's no one who keeps track of this bullshit. I don't know. You just try to deal with things the only way you know how. I don't know why I started slutting around. Was it Mal's death? I don't know what was worse... Mallory's broken, shattered body... or Jessie, immobile and mute, her mind still ticking away, trapped in her own skull. Dr. Reece thinks I wanted to get pregnant to reconnect with my mother through a child. I think she's a bitch.

It's not like I decided to take my birth control late one day on purpose. It just happened. And I happened to go on a date that night with Logan. And the next night with Pete Black. Then I got drunk at a party and I don't remember but...Anyway, it's not like I woke up and decided that I wanted to get pregnant. Hell, I like short skirts and halter tops and it's damn hard to wear those when you're knocked up.

Of course, Dr. Reece suggested that the reason my fashion sense changed was to try to get my dad to pay a little more attention to me.

Like I said, she's a bitch. She's also the only one who will mention what everyone knows but pretends they don't... that I had three kids by my own stepbrother. I was probably sleeping with Logan and Pete so I could even lie to myself, but let's face it, my most common lay is Jeff, visiting Stoney Brook over Winter vacation.

He's fourteen. Old enough. He didn't try to talk to me either, not like the other guys, those that who really knew the old Mary Anne. He just brought me beers and drove with me by Shannon's when he lived around here.

It's not like I'm much older anyway. And it's not like it was on purpose. It's legal. But whatever, that's not the point. Jeff is back in Palo City and I'm with Stacey. In the barn. And I love her, right? Of course I do. I keep telling myself that. It's why I went to see Dr. Reece again... after the dark secrets Dad told me on the day the triplets were birthed, I'd have been crazy not to. The day I discovered the secret: I had a mother I never knew I never knew.

All these years I've been told by everyone: my dad, my grandparents...MIMI...everyone that my mom died of cancer. But on the day that I was the happiest I'd ever been my dad leaned over the hospital bed, cradling his grandson and said, "Mary Anne, I need to tell you something."

He tried to stutter something out and ended up only letting out a broken sob.

Finally, he handed me Jesse and said, "Your mom didn't have cancer."

Of course, I just stared at him. In my older, weepy days, I'd be embarrassed to admit my first thought was what the fuck did this have to do with anything. He just kept crying until he finally pulled himself together-- a tremendous act of will, you could tell. "Your mother killed herself," he whispered, as if he were afraid the babies would hear. "After you were born... she... she became withdrawn. She didn't want to face the world... She had no love left in her... and one night... my OCD medication went missing... and so did Alma."

e sighed. "I'm so sorry Mary Anne. I thought it would be better if you didn't know...But Sharon and I were talking a year or so ago and realized that Alma more than likely was suffering from post partum depression. I just want you to be aware." I just stared at him. Trust Richard Spier to do this. "What the hell, Dad?! Any more secrets you want to come out with? In the third grade, did you have an affair with Mrs. Kishi?"

"I understand your anger, sweet one," he said, ruffling my hair. "But it's better you know now... before... before the demons come out in you... that's why your grandparents took you at first. I was afraid it was me who had let my beloved fall into darkness."

I called for a nurse to take away the babies. I'm sixteen years old and just had triplets. Plus, my mother killed herself when I was six months, my best friends fractured and I've slept with exactly 3/5 of the guys at Stoney Brook High and 1/8 at Stoney Brook Middle (Stacey figured out the math for me). Is there anything worse that the world can toss at me today? Because I'm waiting!

You don't think you can sink lower sometimes, you know? I thought the worst of day of my life was going to that night I went to New York City with Claudia to meet Cam Geary… only to wake up in Harlem the next morning, empty needles on the floor, surrounded by strange men and bottles. Fortunately that Lane bitch Stacey knew came to get us. Stacey had to beg her. That rich bitch condescended us the whole ride back, but she still asked who my dealer was. After that night, I swore no more drugs, just alcohol. And I've kept that vow… well, mostly. A girl can't be perfect.

But as I watched my father slink from the room in shame and the nurse comes to take my babies to the nursery, my father's admission is cruel and painful, but wise, nonetheless. "Nurse," I said, grabbing her arm in desperation (cut me a break, I just found out my mother drugged herself to death rather than nurse me). "Does Dr. Reece still work here?" She nodded. I asked for an appointment.

I hope to God that she can help. Because I do not want to go gently into that good night. I don't want to leave my babies. I don't want to worry that Stacey isn't for me.

And that's why I'm in her office three times a week. It's one of the only times I leave the barn. My father and I haven't spoken since the admission. Sharon was the one who took care of everything. Sharon is the one who watches the babies. I hope they appreciate Sharon... she is, after all, a mother who loved her children. Not like mine... and without having that bond, can I be any better?

Stacey is living in the barn too, most nights. She's wonderful with the babies but sometimes I worry that she's not for me. I know that I'm making her happier than I've ever made any other person before but still...I worry that I'm just settling, that I'll never be able to find anyone else who accepts my three babies.

She accepts that I don't want to touch her. Of course, she thinks its because I'm trying to change, be chaste. Dr. Reece says I should be honest. I'm sure Dr. Reece is a frigid old bitch in a loveless marriage and can't even admit it. Still... I keep coming back. I keep wanting to change. I want good things for me. Dawn called last week. Is the reason I didn't stay on the line because I can't connect? I can't keep anyone around.

I'm trying to change. I thought it might be time to have something permanent that means something. Which is why I now have six tattoos. I've got the babies' names twining around my left wrist now...They've got to help me stay focused. And soon I'll love Stacey the way she deserves.

When that happens, I'll tattoo her name somewhere. Somewhere only she gets to see. I hope it'll happen. Despite all the bad things, I've been lucky. I'm lucky my babies were born perfect, even though I never stopped boozing. They're my gifts from god, my get out of jail free card. I'll make it work. I wonder if my mother watches me now, watches me fight... even though she couldn't. Wouldn't. Dr. Reece says I have to deal with the anger. Of course, she doesn't know I usually do that with a bottle.

At least I'm fighting. Someday I'll get past this fight and have to move on to getting rid of the bottle, but that's a while from now. Right now I'm more worried about the five of us. Well...Deep down, where I'm the old, tenderhearted Mary Anne, I'm worried about eight of us. We've all got our battles.

We've all got our crosses to bear in this life. That's what I've learned. I sneak out of the bed I share with Stacy, to the end of the barn where the nursery is. I look lovingly down at my three spawn. Some women with my condition drown them. Others, like my mother take their own life. But I will be courageous. I will be brave. I will move on. I will forgive my father. I will love my babies and raise them right. I will teach Jessie ballet, so he can do justice to his namesake. Maybe I'll bring them to visit her. Maybe our love, my beautiful babies, could revive her?

I'm thankful I'm getting help. Maybe my bravery will inspire the others… or maybe I'll fall back into sin again? Who knows what the future holds? Nothing in my life has ever been permanent… but these babies will be… unless—no, I won't! II ear a twig crack outside the barn and turn but no one is there. I gaze through the window and see the moon, shining so illustrious and bright. I whisper sweet tales of the man in the moon to my babies and other snippets about the shiny orb of cheese. Yes, there will be love.

Maybe there can be a future. If I can change, so can they. I can be strong for us all, me, pale, timid Mary Anne in a jumper. Yes. I don't have to be angry. I can be brave… and maybe with my courage and gumption, things will get better. We'll pitch in.

And together, aybe we could undo the damage we all caused... the night Mallory died.


	5. Chapter 5

_Hay guyz, sorry for the wait. Here's the new chapter. It is in __**JANINE'S**_ _perspective. Hope you like, we luv getting ur feedback! xoxoxo_

_**Cedar and Vanilla**_

Every day is a routine. I go to class. Put in a few hours at job one. Go back to class. Pay the sitter. See Claude for an hour. Go to job two Pay another sitter. Tuck Claude in. Do homework. My favorite part of the day is tucking Claude in. We both get into our jammie jams, what my mother used to call them, and even if I can't provide the way she did, I can still give all the love. I read him a story and then pull the covers to his chin and kiss his forehead. I like it because I can pretend we're a normal family, that I spend all the quality time with him in the world. The truth is, I don't. I can't help it. What good was the free ride to NYU when you need to buy diapers?

So I'm living in a roach infested fourth floor walk up while struggling to provide for my joy and my light. My parents never struggled. They were both well established in their careers by the time that I and then Claudia came along. And if they didn't have all the time in the world to spend with us? Well, there was always Mimi. Secretly, at least in my case, I always loved Mimi just a little bit more than my parents. I suppose that's the plus of my situation. Claude will always love me best. I'm all he's got.

\Of course, he has grandparents too. My parents love him. He visits. They send him toys. They don't help out, but they shouldn't. When it happened, they told me they still loved me, but that this was my responsibility. I was just grateful not to be cut off from the family. Of course they weren't exactly right when they said it was my choice, but they were right... he is my son. He's mine to provide for.

And between a reception job at the Office of Admissions and a night job running tests for a local laboratory, I provide for him adequately. I don't provide for myself as well, but parenthood is sacrifice. That's the mantra I whisper to myself when it's 2 am and he won't stop crying long enough for me to do my reading. Parenthood is sacrifice.

He's only a baby. Only eighteen months. And I've only got about a year left before I graduate. For so many years I thought that I was going to go on with school forever. I was going to get my PhD and be a professor, but now? Now I'll count myself lucky if I get a job in a lab somewhere. Actually, my night job has said that they'll hire me after graduation. Full time, benefits. I just pray that that happens. Then Claude and I can make a real life. This isn't how I pictured how my life was going to go when I accepted a dinner invitation 27 months ago.

I admit, I knew it wasn't a great idea but... well, I'm Janine the Brain, you know. Brains don't have a lot of... of... of sex appeal. And he was handsome. And smart. He made me feel pretty. The only boys I'd had to beat off were two greasy jerks in my program with the maturity of six year olds. And this man, I looked up to him. I was so flattered. So I said, so what? So what that he was married. So what that he was my faculty advisor. So what that his daughter was my mentee in the Young Scientists program?

Besides, I didn't think anything would happen, except some flirting. After all, he was married. He was my faculty advisor. His daughter was my mentee. Some harmless flirting over a dinner to quote talk about my future.

I was so naive.

He met me at the little Italian place in downtown Stamford. I ordered gnocchi with a spinach sauce. He got spaghetti and meatballs. I should have known right then that I should leave. But he treated me like I was pretty. And he when he leaned across the table to brush my hair out of my eyes, I smelled cedar and vanilla.

I don't know how I was so forgiving of things. It's not like Stamford is in the neighborhood but I agreed that his wife couldn't know. Why couldn't his wife know he was talking to one of his students about her future plans? Well, of course, Janine, deductive reasoning, he'd already rented a hotel room in Stamford and told his wife he had a business trip.

I didn't want to go up to the hotel room but he cajoled me into it, just a drink, he said, get a second wind to drive home. He put his hand on my knee. I brushed it off and saw anger flash in his eye but it was gone so quickly and he smiled so charmingly.

We got into the elevator and he was just a little too close to me. But I brushed it off. He was just being friendly. We were friends, weren't' we? 17 was old enough to have older male friends, wasn't it?

After all, my younger sister had male friends. Of course, I suspected she'd also lost her virginity and had stopped myself from telling our parents about the drugs that were now hidden among her Nancy Drew books. After all, there'd been enough tragedy. Her young friend had died, then a kidnapping, and, goodness, well, sometimes it puts my problems in perspective. It's why I try to be patient with her. Like right now, when I come home to find her asleep on the couch and Claude crying in his crib. I must remain calm. Parenthood is sacrifice.

I know that she loves him. More than she loves anything else. Almost. She's just been having a hard time for the past three years. She's been a huge help to me. It's just really been recently that she's been completely losing it. She used to be more...balanced.

I shake her awake. "Claudia, are you okay?" She groans. Her eyes flutter open. From her pupils I can see she's on drugs. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. I knew she had used but she'd never used when she was with Claude. She promised me.

"Fuck off," she slurs. "I'm trying to sleep. What's that crying?"

"It's Claude," I say firmly. "The same Claude you're supposed to be watching." "You promised me, Claudia! You promised me!" I scream at her, scaring Claude even more. "Chill Mean Janine..." She replies, "I thought it would've wore off by now. Guess not."

I begin to boil inside. How can she subject my baby to this? I have sacrificed everything for this boy. My future. Everyone's respect, just so that he can live a good life and she does this! The memories of that night begin to rush back. I refused to say anything about that night so it wouldn't color his life, so he wouldn't know that he wasn't born in love or even lust.

"Claudia, what if there had been a fire?" I try to reason with her, clutching my hair in my hands. Claude is still crying. I go to him. He's wet. I pick him up and whisper to him softly.

"Well it would have sucked," she replies drowsily from the sofa. "Sorry I can't be perfect like my geniues sister... oh wait, you turned slut teen mother, you're not perfect either."

I almost drop Claude from shock, but I don't. Parenthood is sacrfice and that's not just midterms and new clothes, it's emotions too. I change him silently then kiss him and put him back to sleep. He stars up at me, confused but now crying. He knows something isn't right. I turn to face my sister, hardly able to speak, my throat is so tight with anger.

"What the hell do you know about it Claudia? What do you know about going out to dinner with a man you have great respect for? What do you know about going up to his hotel room and being strongarmed into bed? What do you know about hoping and praying for nine months...NINE MONTHS...That it's just a dream and you'll wake up? What do you know about being kicked out of the house? That's right. You know nothing."

Something flickers in her eyes but it's clear she's too drugged out to understand. I sink down on the couch. I remember it all so well. He must have slipped something in my drink. Or is that just an excuse for being too weak to resist? Too weak to tell him no and leave? To hit him or kick him if it had come to that? It hadn't... a few refusals and I gave in. I didn't want it. I just wanted to please him so badly, this man, this brilliant man who told me I had such great promise, that with proper efforts, I could rise so quickly to the of the field, that all the boys my age were silly not to flock to me. That I had classic beauty and... and more vulgar things later. I didn't want it. But he got what he wanted. All I got were nightmares laced with cedar and vanilla.

I start to cry, softly at first and then harder. Claude joins in. After a few minutes I feel something patting my bat. It's Claudia.

A junkie's charity case, that's what I become. I had. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

"Yeah." I shake my head bitterly. "Who isn't?"

"Is that why you threw out those vanilla candles I got you for your birthday?" She asks, wiping something that might be a tear from her eye.

"Yes," I whisper. "He smelled like vanilla and cedar. I couldn't stand it. I can't go down cooking aisles. I can't walk in the woods." I don't tell her I have to see him on campus, that even when the affair was discovered, tenure led him to keep his job, since I couldn't tell anyone what had really happened. After all, I'd consented, sort of? Hadn't I? I was so weak. I lost so much and all he loses is some money from his paycheck in child support and his Wednesday evenings to marriage counseling. I lost my dignity. But I gained an angel.

He's the reason that I exist. People used to say that I was going to save the world by becoming a great chemist or inventor, but that's not true. I was put on earth to become Claude's mother. At least, that's what I tell myself at 3 AM when he's screaming and all I can smell is cedar and vanilla.

She looked at me. Then she looked down, "I'm not that great anymore. You know that." I sigh. Yes, I do know this. But I also know that, no matter what stupid choices Claudia makes or how many drugs she does in the bathroom of a night club, she'll love my son. She may not be responsible or even very smart, but she will always love him.

"No one makes promises anymore, do they?" I say, mostly rhetorically.

"On the upside," she says, "That means no one is breaking them."

"Oh no," I say, reaching for her hand. "Even when no one makes a promise, they still break them all over the place."

Claude cries from his crib. I sigh and get up. "Everyone breaks them," I whisper. And they do... with sugary words and force that smells ever so faintly of cedar and vanilla...


	6. Chapter 6

_Hey guyz!!! Sry we took so long to update… school is lots of work lately and so we were supersupersuperbusy!!! Hope you like our new chapter… it is ABBY and JESSIE'S perspective… Jessie is in ITALICS! Please review, we luv to get ur feedback!!!_

_**Repaying the Debt**_

When I first started coming, the nurses didn't pay much attention to me. After all, Jessie had been in the hospital almost a year by then. It'd taken me that long to come. It wasn't that I didn't want to before, it's just that... well, I didn't want to run into people. I didn't want to have to explain myself... not to anyone but Jessie. The nurses wouldn't say much, just showed me to her room, reminded me when visiting hours were over. But after a month of showing up three times a week, they started being kinder. A few months ago, they even started ordering me a plate of food.

So it's not abnormal for me to stare down at plates of hospital food. Today is Wednesday. So it's grey meatloaf, mushy peas and instant mashed potatoes. And a carton of milk. I've memorized the dinners on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Because that's when I visit.

From 5:30 to 6:00 pm, like clockwork. It's not because it's convenient, lord knows, before I got my own car, I had to beg Mom. The plate of food was a nice development because I barely had time to choke down a granola bar on the ride over from soccer practice. I'm team captain. It'd be easier to get here from practice if I stayed at Stoneybrook Middle or High, but well, after the accident, I had to leave. I had to start over. I go to a Catholic school over in Litchfield. No one there knows anything. I come at this time because I know it's the only time I won't run into the BSC

I just want to see Jessie. No one else. She's the only one I owe anything. Of course, I'm not even sure if she knows I'm really here. She looks at me, it looks like she's listening when I talk.

But she doesn't respond. She just stares.

Whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, I think of Jessie. I think of how she lives fulltime in the hospital because her Aunt Ceciela became overwhelmed.

Sometimes she moves a little. She shakes her head ever so slightly. She's paralyzed, not in a coma, but she also lost her speech faculties (something about a stroke, I don't know, I'm not a doctor. Didn't Claudia's grandmother have a coma?). Sometimes she groans or mumbles. I read somewhere when people are in a coma, they do that, and the reason they're so medicated is because it's hard for the family to watch. I wonder if she groans because she thinks she sees... well... a murder.

_When Abby comes, I never wish I could touch someone more. Even when I want to kiss my mother, hug my father, hold a now giant Squirt, I still don't want it as much as I want to embrace her and tell her it's okay... I don't... I don't blame her. I was there. I remember. I REMEMBER!_

I look at Jessie and remember. I visit to support her, that's true, but sometimes I also wonder whether I visit to punish myself, because no one else will. I visit to remember the night we all spent together. We started with a party at Claudia's one night, three years ago, when we were just starting to experiment. She hid schnapps and vodka along with the candy now. So we started out there, mixing ourselves drinks, until we decided to walk to the elementary school playground and play, as drunk teens are apt to do.

_Was it so long ago that Abby has forgotten what really happened? I remember when it first happened, when I first came to reside in my wheel prison, my Bastille of metal, the others visited me. They wept and told me they wished it had been different. How they could never forgive... insert a name here, but always constant was their cursing of dear, sweet Abby. She's the only one who still visits me regularly, besides my family. Quint kept up for a good year before I stopped seeing him. Took him that long to realize I mightn't recover from this affliction, that I would never be his Clara, were he to pine to be my nutcracker. And for whose fault? Not Abby's. _

_How dark it was that night we arrived on the playground. We'd all smuggled bottles from our parents' cabinets. We were celebrating our new era. High school for our friends! Cars weren't far off... not that we weren't sneaking joy rides already anyway._

_Kristy had the Junk Bucket that night, with Charlie's permission. She was just to drive it there and back. Carefully. And if any trouble happened, he was going to pretend to know nothing about it._

I remembered playing drunken tetherball. For some reason, that's the first thing that always comes to my mind when I think of that night. Drunken tetherball and the gasps from the bushes, where Claudia and Price Irving were making out.

She'd made plans to meet him there. That rat! It was our night to celebrate! We were free from high school. But whatever, we thought, we weren't going to let her ruin our good time. Dawn kept saying how the whiskey tasted like water, she was so drunk. I'd had barely even half a beer. I wasn't comfortable with the drinking, not after how my father died. But Mallory was the worst, clutching that damn vodka, refusing to share, screeching that she was grown up enough to know her limits. But she wasn't. She was just a child!

_Mallory and I had curfews. Well, not real curfews. We just had to call our parents from Kristy's house when we got in. So we had to get going from the playground first. Abby had drank the least that night and I had fallen asleep in the back seat of the Junk Bucket already. I didn't have a lot of weight, so it doesn't take much to make me pass out. So Abby and Mal got in the car, Mallory swaying and singing, to start driving us back. _

_"I'VE GOT A LOVELY BUNCH OF COCONUTS!!!" she bellowed. "DIDDLY DEE!" Abby tried to focus on the road. Mal's signing woke me up. I wasn't sure where I was but then I remembered. Mallory kept bellowing._

_Abby was so flustered, she tried to quiet down Mallory. "Please, Mal, I need to focus," she pleaded. We weren't even off the playground blacktop where we'd left the car yet. _

_"THERE THEY ARE A STANDING IN A ROOOOOOW, PINK ONE, BLACK ONE--"_

_"MAL, PLEASE!" Abby shouted. "I can't drive with you singing."_

_"THEN I'LL DRIVE!" Mal shouted. "I'M OLD ENOUGH! I'LL SHOW YOU GROWN UP, GUTTERSLUT!!!"_

I should have been stronger. I should have been strong enough to ignore her scratching at my face I should have been strong enough to keep the wheel under my control when Mallory grabbed it from me. But I wasn't. And we went careening at full speed towards the building. And I tried to hit the brakes, but at the same time I was so worried about her getting one of my eyes, that I missed and hit the accelerator instead.

I managed to swerve the wheel back just in time to miss the building. But Mal still had a grip on it. She was screaming in my ear. "LET GO! I'M OLD ENOUGH TO WEAR OFF THE SHOULDER SWEATERS AND I'M OLD ENOUGH TO PUT A CAP IN YOUR ASS!"

We played tug of war with the wheel. I managed to avoid hitting the building again... but as I jerked the wheel and pushed Mallory away, I found I had turned us right at the tetherball poles. The passenger side of the car slammed up against three of them... and kept swerving. Mallory lay slumped over, feebly mumbling "Treat me like a baby, will you, stupid bitch, I'll show you who can wear leggings... junior officer, my ass... I'll kill you... whor..." and then she trailed off. I was bleeding. The others were screaming in terror outside. But the inside of the car was now... silent.

_You wouldn't think that tetherball poles could cause that much damage. I mean, they're little. But apparently they can cause a car to flip, if you're going at it fast enough. The car flipped and I, lying in the backseat without a seatbelt, ended up banging against the ceiling and the sides and resting on the floor. I couldn't feel my legs. That's what I remember most. That and I heard Abby in the front seat, whispering, "Mal? Mallory!?" _

_Before my eyes closed, I could see the poles had torn through the side of the car... Mallory had hit hard against them. The car was a wreck. I heard someone outside... Mary Anne? Stacey?... calling 911. "Help will be here soon..." I thought and let myself fall asleep._

_When I woke up, I was in the hospital, strapped to some contraption that claimed to heal my broken back. I couldn't speak. I thought for days that if only I could turn my head, I would see Mallory in the next bed... but she wasn't there. She was gone. Mallory was gone._

I remember Anna telling me the next day that Mallory was dead and that Jessie was paralyzed from the neck down. Anna. My mom couldn't rip herself away from work long enough to tell me that two of my best friends were dead. She had picked me up at the police station, right after they had told me that they weren't pressing charges. I hadn't blown anything on the test and the scratches on my face gave proof to my story about Mallory grabbing the wheel. So the law wasn't pressing charges. But how about the rest of Stoneybrook? How about the BSC? What about Jessie? What about MYSELF?

I was grounded, of course, which gave me plenty of time to sit up in my room, creating my own little hell. It was summer, so I didn't have to see anyone at school. After a few days, I realized that no one had called to see how I was. Sure, I only had a concussion and a broken arm, but well, no one called. It took me a few more days to realize my only chance to survive was to get out of Stoneybrook. Mom wouldn't move, but she enrolled me in a new school. I told everyone I had just moved from Long Island, as if the last year never happened. As if the BSC never happened.

It worked. No one there figured it out. I made friends. Joined any sports team I could find. They had a big soccer program and I channeled all my grief into that. Made captain. I have a boyfriend. I was the only freshman invited to Junior/Senior prom last year! I babysit for our neighbors. I get good grades. I don't feel. I don't remember. That year might as well have never happened.

And except for these visits, that's how I feel most of the time. I don't know if anyone of them think of me. I don't even care anymore. After my father died, I learned how to numb my soul from pain. I'm good at it. I have these three meetings a week to feel. That's an hour and a half. Then I have 166 and a half hours the rest of the week to be numb. But in these hours, I choke down dry food and beg Jessie to forgive me.

_Abby visits me three times a week. Sometimes she cries. Sometimes she talks to me and sometimes the only thing that she says is, "Forgive me Jessie. Forgive me." I want to laugh. Damn this stroke. What should I forgive her for? It's Mal's fault. Mal's. Besides, I have people who have treated me much worse than Abby. The reason I'm living in this hospital is not because I really need to. A trained person could take care of me by coming in once or so a day. And that's what happened for the first six months after the accident. Until Aunt Cecilia got tired of taking care of me. I know that she hurt me. Hurt me quite a lot. It doesn't matter that I can't feel...It's still not something I'm inclined to forgive her for. For the beatings and everything else..._

_No one else ever apologizes. The other girls, back when they visited, they always said they wished they'd known how drunk Abby was, that they'd never have let her drive. Yeah, right. As if they weren't so utterly drunk and focused on themselves that they even cared what happened. My parents don't apologize for being so absent that their 11 year old daughter was out boozing at a playground. And Mallory... she can't apologize. I suppose that's why no one blames her. Who wants to speak ill of the dead? Besides, it's a lot of people's fault. But not Abby's, who tried to get us home safely, who tried to take care of us. _

_She leans down next to me chair and I wish I could cock my head down to look at her. She's crying. I can't comfort her. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. "Please, forgive me."_

I look at her, hoping to see forgiveness in her eyes but all I see is an intenseness that can only mean utter and complete hate. Just like always.

I stand up and pat her hand. "I'll see you Friday," I tell her. "I'll bring some music for you to listen to. Classical stuff. Anna's helping me." I turn and head for the door. "I'll always be here, Jessie. I have a lot to make up for," I say before passing through it.

As if I could even begin to repay the debt, undo the damage... as much I like to pretend it didn't happen, I can't change what happened... the night Mallory died.

Jessie knows that better than anyone.


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's Note: Sorry for taking soooooooo long, it's just things are ker-azy all the time. We're almost to the end and don't worry, we've got a really great ending that will tie everything together and answer all of those pressing mysteries! REVIEW PLEASE WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU 3 3 3 3 xoxoxo_

_**Happy Birthday, Claudia!**_

Cam always calls me from the limo when he picks me up at Janine's. It's nothing personal, he says, it's just my sister's a slut and the neighborhood isn't safe for a star like him. It's not that he doesn't like Janine, it's just, what would the press say if they saw him with a girl with her reputation? He doesn't need another paternity claim. He's right. He's so smart. I just wish... now that I knew my sister's secret, I wish she could share in the glam and bright lights that he provides for me. It's so unfair. How could my sister have hidden this? Why did her life go so terribly wrong when she was so good and I, Claudia Kishi, the girl who failed eighth grade, never read anything but Nancy Drew, and snorts coke like it's my motherucking job, get all the perks in life?

I met Cam Geary when I was 14, hanging out in some artist's studio in SoHo. The artist told me I was his muse. He gave me coke and, even harder for a fourteen year old to get without her parents finding out, birth control. It all worked out. Then Cam came in one night for a party. Cam was older and famous and still so sexy. And he always knows what's going on. He knows about the world. He's been working in Hollywood since he was 12 and he's 23 now. Still famous. Still acting as those pretty frat boys who chug beers. But he says he's going to go into theater soon. Cam knows what he wants and how to get it. That's why I let him call me from the limo.

We've been together ever since. He spoils me. I take the train up every day from Stoneybrook and he makes his limo take me home. It's perfect. We're in love. He's going to get me my big break. And now, the night of my birthday, he's throwing me the biggest bash in history. He's rented out the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he's invited all sorts of cultured people I need to meet. There's a small exhibit of my work. Hostess is catering. I'm in love. I'm in heaven. I... I... my sister was raped.

I never thought she would be. Janine was always the good girl. She never went anywhere that you would think would be conducive to a rape. Not like me. I'm seventeen and I can't count really remember how many strange beds I've woken up in. Being raped wouldn't have changed me so much. I could deal, do a little more coke, find a couple other drugs. But Janine? I can't imagine how she was feeling.

It would've changed me, yes. But not as much as it hurt Janine.

Cam keeps grabbing at me in the limo, unable to see (or care) that I'm upset. I push him away and he moves to the mini bar to make drinks. I can't wait for the party. I'll forget everything at the party. And as Cam hands me a drink, I start forgetting in the limo.

I was always this way, addictions and secrets. Back then it was binge eating and trashy books. Trying to shock people with my clothes. Everyone should have known that binge-eating would give way to alcohol, secrets would become sex romps, and hey, a better way to shock my parents is to show up strung out after a three day heroin binge.

To cheer myself up, I look down at the dress sitting on the seat next to me. Cam has, once again, helped me to raid Stella McCartney's newest show. It's just a simple black dress, worn with my hair loose and long and lots of makeup. Whoever said heroin chic was out was wrong, in my opinion. I'll add a couple of necklaces and some high heels and be ready for the paparazzi.

...Janine doesn't need make up to make her eyes dark and sorrowful.

Cam put a stop to my crazy dressing. It was a requirement of our relationship. He has a lot of rules. Most are sexual. Whatever. With the perks, who misses anything?

The cameras flash as Cam leads me in. Let's face it, I'm stumbling already. I thought I'd gotten over my bender at Janine's, but the stuff Cam gave me in the limo was just what I needed to get back on track. Once inside, I immediately beeline to the open bar. Well, not immediately. First I snort another line in the corner, but after that, it's all gin for me. Cam always wonders why I pick gin over vodka for all my drinks. I've never told him the whole story of my past. Vodka takes me back. Back to the night. The night Mallory. Mallory died.

No, no, no! I'm not going to think of it now! I'm going to drink gin and tonics. Lots of gin and tonics. Then when I'm sick of tonic, I'll just drink straight gin. Either way, I'm not going to think about it.

I smile for the cameras and nod at Cam's artist friends. I stand up straight when he pinches my neck, hard, to remind me. I examine the work of all the artists and look at mine. I consider eating a Twinkie but don't really feel hungry. I try to remember the last time I ate but get another drink instead. Then I look across the room.

I see something... a flash... out of the corner of my eye, but Cam won't move his hand, still pinching me hard. He asks if I want to go see the classic art, no one's there, he tells me, he'll fuck me so hard under the Monet. I giggle slightly and tell him later. I think I saw something crazy. Something I can't tell anyone about, not even Cam. I tell him I need a moment and motion to my nose. He nods and says to hurry back, I have people to meet. Happy birthday, he says. Sometimes he looks like a wolf bearing all of this teeth. Too bad I don't talk to that slut Mary Anne anymore, or I'd tell her about her dream boat.

Instead of going to the bathroom, I just pop a pill from my box in my purse...I made this box. I covered it in jewels and it looks good, if I say so myself. I was going to make one for each of the BSC, before that night happened. I look again for the flash across the room and I see it in a person. It's a girl, she's with some guy that Cam knows. He's a poet or some crap like that. She reminds me of someone I used to know, so very long ago.

I'm momentarily distracted by my box again. I'm not gone enough. I'm not enough of a star yet. I deliberate. Perkaside, Vicodin? Perkaside? Vicodin? Adderall! I pop the pill and return to Cam. He takes my hand and holds it gently. A camera flashes. He starts leading me over to the guy I saw earlier, the one with the girl, who's fuzzy to me, like a black and white memory, in the film projector of my mind, like old family photos, like days I'll never reclaim and then I remember and before I can even put it together, I hear my voice shrieking, as if out of body. "MALLORY!"

After I shriek, I stop, falling to the ground. When Cam drags me out, trying to make it look as I'm walking, the girl disappears. We get into the hall and I fall to my knees. "What the fuck Claudia? I do this for you and this is how you repay me?" He's got my hair balled up in his hand and is forcing me to look into his eyes as he shouts at me. I shiver, remembering just how bad it can get when Cam gets mad.

A camera flashes and Cam straightens up. We are never alone. One of his bodyguard grabs the camera and breaks it. Suddenly Cam starts crying, big fake crocodile tears. "Are you all right, my darling?" he proclaims, cradling me. He leans in to my ear. "I'll deal with you later," he hisses, inaudible to others. He motions to his favorite bodyguard, a giant man named Sid. I like Sid. I'm his Christmas bonus. "Take my baby to the hospital," Cam orders.

Sid scoops me up and takes me outside. "IT WAS HER," I scream, hitting his chest until he sets me down on the stairs at the back of the Met. "I KNOW WHAT I SAW!"

Sid just stares at me, wordlessly offering me a cigarette. I take it and sit down heavily on the steps. Sid knows I'm not sick. He's seen me when I'm sick. I stub out the cigarette when it's not even half done. I need something stronger to convince me that I really didn't see her. That she wasn't here. I dig through my purse in search of the box but instead find a small package of sidewalk chalk. Little Lucy Newton and I were drawing last Sunday morning. She'd just gotten home from church. I hadn't been back in Stoneybrook in three days and hadn't been to bed in two.

"I'm not crazy," I slur at Sid. "You don't know what it was like. I saw it all. That fucking bitch Abby. I saw it all."

Sid gazes at me with the same disapproval, fond but disapointed, my parents gave me all those years. "I'm sure, Miss," and he even sounds sincere.

"It was fucking her."

"Abby?"

"No... Mallory. She's dead. She's dead. She's dead."

I look at the chalk. The moon shines on the sidewalk, illuminating it. Sid is staring. I try to remember Mallory's favorite color. I can't. The past is too gray, too fuzzy. I don't remember anything. What was her favorite book? Animal? I think it was a pony. I think she wanted to be a writer. But it's too risky. I have only one chance to reach her. I can't risk a mistake. I grab a piece of blood red chalk and raise it in the air, like a sword. I bring it down on the concrte.

MALLERY WE'VE BEEN WEIGHTING

I feel Sid's hand on my shoulder. "Let's go, Miss." Before he can drag me away, I add.

MALLORIE CUM HOME

And then I let him lead me off, sobs wracking my body.


	8. Chapter 8

_OMG so sorry for the long wait this time, but things got ker-azy busy with the holidays and stuff. Hopefully we will be back for realz and can finish it up. No reviews make us sad, so plz give us feedback, especially if it's tips for improvement. We luv u guys, xoxoxoxoxo._

_ This is LOGAN's perspective.  
_

_**Rapunzel for the 20**__**th**__** Century**_

It's amazing how even the most boring person has so many secrets. I'm not special, just a small town loser. I play a few sports pretty okay. I might get into Conneticut State-Stoney Brook. My ex-girlfriend got knocked up and I had to get tested to prove I'm not the father. That'll probably happen again. I'll major in something stupid, like finance and live in Stoney Brook forever. Of course, it didn't have to be that way, but when your heart gets irrevocably broken at 14, you kind of stop dreaming.

People think I'm ordinary. They have no idea what kind of dreams I once had. That I'm perfectly happy dating whichever cheerleader is putting out that week. That I don't need or deserve anyone who fills my heart and my mind, forget about the physical stuff. That I still sleep with Mary Anne whenever I get the chance. Sorry, no. We've been known to go to parties together but she always finds someone else there. And I'm fine with that.

In fact, it's because I'm not interested enough in them that I have a revolving door of girlfriends. High school girls, especially the kind I date, they don't want to talk about a future or a family or what kind of books they read. Once I had a girl who talked about the books she wanted to write. Who I wanted to have a family with. Now I'm dragged to labs to prove I didn't father kids with a girl who shouldn't be allowed near them, despite how sweet she once was.

What happened to all the sweet, smart girls in this world? I had Mary Anne once and when she started changing...Oh, I know what people think. That I lost interest when she rebelled after the car accident that year. But that's not when I started to look at someone else. When we first started dating Mary Anne was kind and gentle and unassuming. And then one day she started bossing people around and cutting her hair and breaking up with me and then wanting to get back together...My dreams started before she began to get tattoos or sleep around.

I guess it's not fair to make it sound like it was her fault. I fell in love with someone else before she changed... and then I used her to make everyone think I wasn't with someone else. It wasn't because I wanted to. Oh no, I wanted to sing it from the mountains that I, Logan Bruno, was in love with Mallory Pike. But her parents barely let her talk to that Ben kid, they wouldn't let her date some eighth grade jock. It had to be a secret. Like I said, we all have secrets. And sometimes, secrets call for desperate measures to stay hidden.

I remember the very first time I realized that I was in love with Mallory Pike. I had gone over to sit for her brothers and sisters with her one night. It was one in the morning; the Pikes were still out doing whatever they were doing. Probably getting pregnant...They're up to 10 kids now. Had two since the car accident. People say that they're trying to replace Mal. Anyway, we were just sitting on her couch talking about what we wanted to do in the future. I told her about wanting to be a middle school teacher and coach. And she told me about the stories she wanted to write. Somewhere between the mouse who went to New York and the ponies who lived on the plains, I forgot about the frizzy hair and the thick glasses and Mary Anne. I loved Mallory Pike and I knew it.

She became my Rapunzel for the twentieth century, frizzy hair instead of golden locks and locked away by parents and obligations and rules and The Man, instead of a tower and a witch. She cried every night about her burdens and oppression. No off the shoulder blouses. No contacts. But those slights seemed minute in face of her true restriction: she couldn't be free to love me. Its one thing for arbitrary rules, made up by small town gossip to restrict fashion-- but no one has the right to restrict the heart. We had to escape.

We had it all planned out. We were going to run away to New York City the day after the BSC playground party. Of course, that's not what happened. But then, what really happened isn't what people thought.

Because Mallory Pike didn't die that night.

Instead, with my help, she faked her own death and ran off to the city.

We paid off the nurses to smuggle her out with our hoarded babysitting money and her parents received ashes that they thought were here. Instead, those were remnants of Bruno cookouts. And Mallory went off to the city, pretending to be a divorced writer named Linda Bruno.

Linda was my aunt. After her divorce, minor psychotic break, and marginal commercial literature success, she'd become a recluse. I was always her favorite nephew and I knew she wanted to escape her life as much as Mallory and I wanted to escape ours. She bought a plane ticket to Tahiti... and Mallory dusted off a typewriter in a one bedroom apartment in Queens.

And Mal started over. You've probably heard of Linda Bruno, writer of books for the pre teen girls. All about rainbows and fluffy bunnies. She's made it into quite an enterprise, there are books, clothing deals, a TV show, even a few movies in the works. And she's done all this in her glittery off the shoulder sweatshirts. And you know that means she's smart and talented. Because I love her and everything but she just can't pull off the same clothes as Claudia and Stacey or even Mary Anne could.

Unfortunately, there wasn't room in the life of a now 33 year old literature magnet for a 15 year old boyfriend. After the first book in years, Linda Bruno emerged to meet the press once again. She started partying around New York City, always keeping the secret of her flawless skin and youthful looks to herself, laughing away questions with a "I had to be doing something in that dusty apartment all this time!" She met people she found more interesting than a future accountant in a no-name New England town whose dimples weren't anything as glam as John Grisham's checkbook.

We went months without talking. Each day was worse than the first. But I kept calling and gradually she consented to see me. After all, she thought I might reveal her secret (though I would never betray my beloved). And besides, an auntie has to keep up with her favorite nephew. She consented to see me every three months or so. Each time she'd grill me about everyone back home, taking strange joy in each BSC members' fall from grace. She never cared about how every one mourned her. The closest she came to remarking on it was to snicker and say "Well, maybe they should have let me wear dangly earrings if they cared so much." She was becoming someone I barely recognized (and not because of all the plastic surgery).

I stayed because I remembered how good it was. And when you've been in love, even afternoon every three months is worth hanging on for.

I just saw her three weeks ago and I was shocked to see her name on my caller ID so soon afterwards. Her motivations came clear right away: she had been seen by Claudia.

I took the train into the city and spent the afternoon trying to convince her that the only way that anyone would believe anything that Claudia Kishi said these days was if it involved the best place to get some prescription drugs. When she finally got that in her head she just asked me a few questions about whether I had heard if Dawn was actually a whore or just a junkie or both. Then she showed me the door. After giving me a hug. Again, the physical was never that big for me in this relationship. But she used to talk to me about her next book or what she did the night before. Now I'm just kicked out.

She wasn't convinced though and called me back a few days later. Claudia had written a message to her on the sidewalk outside the party (she remarked cattily that repeating the 7th grade hadn't fixed her spelling). She was afraid Claudia would come find her. I tried to assure her she wouldn't, unless Mallory started peddling meth. She wasn't convinced. She asked me to take care of it-- to take care of Claudia. I didn't know what she meant.

"I mean I want you to get rid of the problem," she said and she pushed me onto the couch. "Do it for me. Show me you're a man."

I looked at Mallory and just had to ask her one question. "What do you want me to do, exactly, Mal?"

I looked at her and, trying to reason with myself, trying to tell myself that my love couldn't be asking me to kill Claudia Kishi finally asked her right out, "Do you want me to kill Claud?"

"Of course I do! Oh, Logan when I was young, I once thought you had to make the best of the life you had-- now I know you can just make the life you want from scratch, if you're willing to do what you have to." Mallory came over to me and knelt on the floor next to the couch, grabbing my hand, "Show me you're a man Logan, let me start with a fresh state...I did it once, why can't you?"

I stared at her, trying to realize what she was saying, what she was asking me to do. She reached up and stroked my cheek.

"Show me you're not a little boy. I could only be with a man, Logan. I'd know you really loved me, that you understood what an adult relationship takes."

"Mal, I don't think I can kill Claud--"

"You're a pussy then," she said and moved away from me. "You're almost grown, you fucking wimp! I was 11 when I faked my death and killed that bitch aunt of yours!"

I looked at her, really looked at her for the first time in years. There was so little left of the girl I fell in love with. The hair is different, the teeth too. And the mind, her mind is not even close anymore. And she killed my aunt Linda. Linda, who was happy to go to Tahiti and never come back. Linda, who when I was young used to write special stories just for me.

In a different way than Mallory meant for me to understand, I get what it means to be a man, what an adult relationship takes. I know that sometimes love isn't kind or happy. Sometimes it means doing whatever you have to do to save the person you love. Even if they end up hating you. Even if it's not what you want. Sometimes you have to do what it takes to stop them, before they get to a point where they can't turn back. Sometimes you have to lie to them. Sometimes you have to tell their secrets.

I nod and choke emotion out of my voice. I tell her she's right. I tell I'll do what she's asked. The change is instantaneous and she's all smiles again. I blink away tears and make my excuses to leave.

I know what I have to do. And I know I need help.


	9. Chapter 9

_Oh my, a long time between updates, I bet you thought we forgot about u guyz! No worries, we are just super busy (gigundoly busy even!) This one is in KAREN'S perspective and is dedicated to my friend Maria who loves these ficcies, hey girl! xoxoxoxoxoxo plz review, we love you all and your helpful feedback!_

_**Strongest**_

One summer, Nanny's foolishness changed my life. At the time, I thought it was destroying it but slowly I have come to realize her naiveté gave me purpose-- her mistake led me to a destiny. In a family filled with weakness, I found strength. I looked to the future. I survived.

I remember the day I came home to find Nanny wracked with sobs over her computer-- an iMac Daddy gave her. Andrew had emailed, she said, he's trapped in Nigeria and needs 3200. Of course I remember it-- it happened far more than once in the time she cared for me. It happened so often that she gave away my tuition fee to complete strangers.

I was supposed to go a fancy boarding school. Something like Miss Porter's School where people had gone for generations and I would meet alumna who had gone there with my grandmother. But there went my tuition and it was August and we couldn't track down Daddy in time. So Nanny looked online and found a school that was still accepting applications.

A military school.

Having been a distinguished ROTC cadet at Stoney Brook Day School, it wasn't the end of the world. At first it was just supposed to be for a semester-- I mean, it was better than public school and Daddy said he would handle my school affairs from now on and then I'd be on my way to the prestigious St. Catherine of Sienna's Prepatory School for Privileged Young Woman-- sister school to St. Jerome's boys school where Cam Geary himself had gone!

But a semester of training-- rules, discipline, putting my soul on the line as I painstakingly built endurance proved addictive. Whenever I felt like giving up, I pictured the weakness that flowed through my veins. Nanny hunched over a keyboard sobbing. Daddy on the run. Andrew not knowing how to escape. I never left military school. I chose to stay. I chose to become more.

I wake up every morning, roll out of bed and put on my sweatpants and a tank top, choosing to run five miles every day instead of the required two. Then it's back to the gym to do 60 sit ups, 100 push ups and 20 chin-ups. I am strong.

They treasure my sense of order and discipline. How I never use contractions. How I am magnificent and the first to volunteer. They treasure my ambition here in a way Ms. Coleman never did. They know I am amazing. They know I am strong. Stronger. Strongest.

I will always be stronger. I see Elizabeth for dinner sometimes when I go home, she's the closest thing I have to a mother these days. I am stronger than her. I do not constantly need a man to make me feel protected.

And that's how we end up at Christmas, with Nanny, Elizabeth, and my vile stepsiblings, and Kristy has just commented that at least I will be able to protect them all, being a solider. I laugh and take it in the spirit it's given, but the truth is, I would never protect any of them. It is NOT the duty of the strong to save the WEAK, it is the duty of the WEAK to become strong, and the strong survive on their own.

I do not like this, necessarily. It's just the way that the world works and always has. Sometimes I dream of making a place where the strong and weak could survive together, maybe find a middle ground. But I figure that such a place exists nowhere on this earth.

I am ashamed to say that I am not always strong. Sometimes I think of Mommy...I still call her Mommy. After all, I was still young enough to call her that when she left and I guess I am trapped there. Anyways, sometimes I think of Mommy and Andrew and how I thought she always loved us. Just not enough to do what was best for us and let us live with Watson and Elizabeth. But then I remember that I am strong and I run a few miles...Run until all I can think of is the screaming of my calves and thighs.

And I become strong again.

"I received another email from Andrew this week!" Nanny announces excitedly. No one looks at her, everyone just stares at their dinner plate, filled with store-bought versions of home cooking. "He says he almost has enough money to come home! I bet they'll be two more spots at Easter dinner! Watson will come back!"

"Did you send him more money?" Charlie asks apprehensively.

"Oh, just a little bit. He's working now, at a diamond mine, but he says he is in serious debt and needs to pay off his creditors before he can buy his ticket home... you know boys as young as he is do not manage their pocketbooks very well!"

I swear to God, if we were Eskimos, Nanny would be on an ice floe by now. Elizabeth looks up with stricken eyes from her pot roast...

"Mother, we've discussed this...Andrew isn't sending you those e-mails."

Nanny looks heartbroken. Every time we tell her this she looks heartbroken.

"But, but..." She manages to stutter out a few syllables before going into great sobs and wailing something out about she thought this time it was really him, the e-mail misspelled "embasy" just the way she thought Andrew always would!

She glares angrily through her tears at Charlie. "None of you want him back! If you did, you would help me! He needs money! He is slaving away in a diamond mine and he tries to sound chipper but I know he's in pain! He has the same positive attitude he had as a child when Karen would bully him so!"

Sam tries to calm Nanny, "We all want him back--"

I can not take this any more. This is gigundoly weak, the worst kind. "ANDREW IS DEAD!" I scream and slam my fist on the table. "My brother, Andrew, is dead."

I get up and walk around to Nanny. "He is dead and he is not coming back. If that bitch hasn't killed him, he's gone for good anyway and the only one who thinks different are my neurotic father and old women who should have been put in a home a long time ago! Those emails are scam artists who pray on the old and senile, like you! Do you want to end up like Morbida Destiny!?"

Morbida was, allegedly, killed by theive workmen who had endeared themselves to her and then robbed her for everything she had and cut her throat. One would think she would have had a better truth spell. But boo and bullfrogs for that witch!

Nanny weeps harder and everyone else turns to glare at me.

"As for the rest of you, for the love of Christ, get over it, mourn him and move on!" I scream this and run past their dumbfounded faces...Must run, run, run, until I can not think. I think I go about seven miles until I end up by the little house. Seth doesn't live there anymore. There's probably a new family there fighting for a place with my memories. I sink to the curb and stare up at the moon.

I do not know how long I sit there but finally someone comes out of the Little House. It's an older woman, probably as old as Mommy would be now. She introduces herself as Madge LaRoux. I tell her I used to live in her house.

"You mean... I mean... were you...?"

"Yes," I say firmly. "My mother kidnapped my brother during a contentious custody debate."

"Your poor brother..."

"My poor BROTHER?" I can not help but laugh. "Oh, it was cakewalk for me! Do you know how it feels, Madge, to be left behind? To have all the attention stolen from you? To be brilliant, BRILLIANT, mind you, and have no one notice?! No one care?! To go from a two-two to none-none?! I lost my entire family and worse, I lost my audience! I lost my flatterers! I went from adored and venerated, rightly, for my brilliance, to nothing!"

Madge looks nervous but I keep going. "But I found love and adoration later in life. In my drill sergeants! In my comrades! I outshine them all and one day I shall fix this miserable world so that no precocious child prodigy grows up alone, without proper reverence!"

"I… I am sorry?"

"You'd better be sorry, lady, gigundoly sorry!" I shake my fists angrily. And then I pull myself back together.

"Maybe you should go…" Madge murmurs.

I turn to leave and I am suddenly staring at Logan Bruno and Abby Stevens. They tell me they need my help—finally someone is looking for a solution—they tell me terrible things, that Mallory is alive, that she has been exploiting my grandmother, posing as Andrew in Nigeria.

"I will make her pay!" I shout, since that is what the strong do, make people pay. Once I would have summoned the other musketeers for this mission, but since I joined a real army, I do not care about these things.

"This must come as a surprise," Abby says.

"The mighty are never surprised," I say darkly as we begin the walk to the police, the moonlight shining on our faces. "I never trusted that frizz-haired authoritarian."


	10. Chapter 10

_Hey guys, so sry for takin' so long, but here is the new chapter. It is in MALLORY's perspective. I know, rite?! Omg omg plz read and review, your feedback makes us so happy, luv luv luv xoxoxoxo_

_**The Rise and Fall of Linda Bruno**_

The only dignity they showed me was trying me as an adult. At least the metered scales of Lady Justice recognized my maturity. Rightfully so. I have a lot of time to reflect on the wisdom of age, years lived beyond mere time, now that I've been put away. They say even my high powered lawyers couldn't save me from myself, but I know that it was the knowledge that any prison or institution is better than returning to the hell masquerading as the Pike family home.

John Pike, my father. Dee Pike. So many siblings: Byron, Adam, Jordan, Vanessa, Nicky, Margo and Claire. And don't forget my namesake...Mallory II and then the two baby twins, Edna and Edward. I'll be sucked back in before you can blink. Dreaming of the day I can finally wear skirts above my knee...Trying to deal with my frizzy hair with the cheap shampoo that they insist that is all they can afford. Why the hell didn't they stop after me? Why wasn't I enough for them?

If they can't afford 8...Excuse me, 11 kids...Why did they have them?!

"Kids," John used to laugh and say, "Fun to make but suck to raise!" And everyone would guffaw with him. Except for me. I never found the whole thing funny. There's not much to giggle about a working class family with too many mouths to feed and parents who confuse Frodo the hamster with whomever their youngest child is (at the time).

I remember when the Pikes-- I can't even think of them as my family, having been Linda for so long now-- the Pikes came to visit me in jail after I was so poetically betrayed by the only man I'd ever loved or trusted. No one really spoke, except that loon Vanessa who just danced around, singing a poem she'd written.

_Things can change, oh dear lord _

_The sister we once adored _

_Is now so reviled _

_And is on trial _

_The night Mallory died _

_Was really the night Mallory LIED_

The day after they visited was the trial. I sat quietly in my black suit with my hair in a sedate chignon. My team of lawyers told me to look as adult and mature as possible, after arguing for days about whether or not I should try to look my birth age. Thankfully, they went the other way. However, they didn't know that my earrings were shaped like unicorns. You've just go to have something sparkly, no matter what!

I like to think I managed to get a good sense of fashion from hanging out with Claudia and Stacey so many years (god, it seemed like we never got older). Claudia used to wear the wildest outfits, like this one time, she came to school with her hair dyed mauve and then shaved down the middle (but still hair on both sides), oversized green fisherman's boots, turquoise and violet plaid striped stretch pants, and a pink bowling shirt that said WHITE PRIDE on the back (she was being ironic) and two bone earrings! Man, I used to idolize that crack-addled whore.

When I was arrested, John and Dee tried to offer to hire me a lawyer. Oh, how I laughed. Their "little girl" could afford ten-- no, fifty-- times the legal defense they could. Besides, their offer probably came with strings... strings attached to bulky plastic glasses, I'm sure.

They'd never accept that I was any older than Clare. Instead, I had to TAKE my age and my revenge. They forced my hand.

At the trial, all the old Baby Sitter's Club Members were there. Even Abby, that bitch who helped Logan sell me out. Kristy Thomas sat in the front row and apparently tried to get other people to forgive me. What did I do that needed forgiveness?

"Friends screw up sometimes," she would say eagerly. "Friends forgive." Her dowdy face would fall and then she'd lift her vapid, empty eyes upward, and show us all the mock-up of her new poster announcing the re-opening of the BSC. "It could be like it was before... when we were... happy..." she'd sniffle.

But I hadn't been happy then. I was only ever happy as... Linda.

I had power, prestige, money and as many men...Grown men...As I wanted. Oh, sure. Logan was great for kicks when I was in Stoneybrook, but I really only ever saw him as one thing. A way out. He'd been working at the Rosebud Cafe for like two years! He had to have quite the savings account. Of course, I hadn't thought about how many stuffed animals he bought me.

When I found out his savings had dwindled, the situation seemed almost untenable until he broke down crying one day about same aunt of his, going crazy after a divorce. A little prodding and I met Linda Bruno, mediocre author, and miserable woman seeking a way out. She agreed to cede me her identity, to run away. But she was unstable. How could I trust her to stay?

When one grows up in a house, unnoticed and unloved, raising the siblings whose constant needs obscure you, one learns how to be clever, to always be prepared.

Yes, Linda needed to go.

It wasn't hard. Just a little push when she thought I was hugging her goodbye and there she was...Lifeless. Ah! I imagine you want to know how I hid the body...Well, I don't want to give up all my secrets...Just know that there aren't only baby alligators in the NYC sewers.

My lawyers wanted to paint me as a scared, little girl, very clever, but traumatized after watching the accidental death of a woman she admired. They said posing as Linda was because I was afraid I would be blamed. It was a clever little girl's way of hiding under the stairs. I forbid them from using this defense.

Instead I gave them my own version of the truth: that I had posed as Linda to protect the real murderer, my beloved boyfriend Logan Bruno, from being punished. He had turned me in because in his own deluded mind, he'd blocked it out or maybe to get away with it once and for all. Who knows?

Of course, there were more amusing things to do than tell this to the judge during my trial. Claudia Kishi was there. She kept excusing herself to the ladies room.

Sure.

I'd only wished Dawn had been there but apparently it's hard to get the weekends off when you're a junkie whore.

The best thing to see was single mommy Marianne. Oh, Logan had told me of her insta-family with triplets and Stacey, but there was nothing finer than seeing that bitch, that bitch who had once suffered like me in clothes meant for younger children but had with no struggle suddenly allowed a short, cute cut and a boyfriend. Yes, her demise was the sweetest of all.

Her failure and my success only further legitimate the fact that I was always the mature one. I deserved the short hair. And Claudia-- it is clear I was more worthy of those glittery legwarmers. The other sitters all ruined their damn lives but me? I BUILT A DAMN EMPIRE. Linda Bruno's preteen chapter books, particularly the Mallory the Grown-Up Unicorn series, have sold millions of copies. Translated into 26 languages! There's an animated TV show.

That's right, Kristy, let's talk about business sense, you moping pretender.

Let's see you haze me, judge me, try to keep me from joining, degrade me into a junior officer now!

All I can think about is all they lost... and all that I gained that fateful night I staged a tragedy.

Of course, the judge let me go. There's no jury in the world that will convict a sobbing girl on the witness stand. I'm still upset that they didn't believe my lawyers when they said that Logan did it...But at least I'm not in jail.

Of course, I'm not overly fond of the place where I am. Welcome to Sunshine Manor. The court placed me back into the custody of John and Dee. When they walked up to me while Dee was crying, I just said it. "Don't waste your tears on me. They don't matter. I will wear make-up! I WILL WEAR GLITTER! I WILL SHOP AT VICTORIA'S SECRET STILL!"

Soon the entire courtroom was silent as they stared at me. Good. Now I've begun as I mean to go on. John and Dee may be able to force me to live with them, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to bend back into that sickening eleven year old.

The court officers, nice men, told me their children loved my books, tried to comfort me, telling me my parents were good people. "They aren't my parents," I said, and spit at the Pikes for good measure, "They were my jailors."

I pulled my shirt collar to the side, stretching it off my shoulder. "I'll wear whatever I want!" I shouted and pointed at my cleavage, "I paid 20 grand for these and I'll show 'em off however I want!"

Dee sobbed harder and I laughed and laughed. My lawyers told me to calm down, told me they'd file to have me emancipated, it would just be a few weeks.

"A few weeks?! You don't understand!" I raged. "Living there was hell. I HAD TO KILL A BITCH TO ESCAPE! Do you think I liked taking a human life?!"

Thank god for double jeopardy laws!

But I wasn't thinking. And that's how I ended up here, in Sunshine Manor. It's not a fancy spa or anything, although I pretend it is. I always ask for my lemon-cucumber water when we get our medications in the morning. Really, it's a mental health center. Although it's my prison. John and Dee had strings to pull that I never knew about. Apparently Dee had dated some high level lawyer in college and they were still in contact. He had me declared legally incompetent...For the rest of my life. My lawyers sighed sadly and said it was airtight, that for the rest of my days I'd be wherever the Pikes...First John and Dee and then the triplets sent me.

It's not bad. I can wear whatever I wanted, unless it's sharp or pointy. They actually prefer my contacts because it's less likely to be made a weapon. Kristy stops by a lot, to tell me her newest scheme of freeing me. She's trying to organize the old client kids into a Free Mallory chapter but so far she's the only member. Figures.

Logan comes by too, to tell me he forgives me and loves me still. He says he can't wait until I'm better again, his sweet girl again. I tell him about how I suck off orderlies for cigarettes and laughs while he cries. Except for the Pikes, no one else visits.

Of course I pay for my own care and am still writing from the institution. The Pikes can't afford quality care so I foot the bill for my own bondage. Hilarious. The trial was actually great for sales. I developed a cult following among teenagers who hate their parents.

The money goes to my care and then to a foundation I set up to help mentally ill girls-- of course, it helps no one and is really just a tax shelter. I miss the outside world, my apartment in the Bronx, my suitors. At night, I sit in the common room and gaze at the moon, planning my next move. I'm slowly waiting until I have enough money in the foundations' account to either buy my freedom... or my revenge.


	11. Chapter 11

The light of the sun is different on the moon

_HI GUYS!_

_OMGOMGOMG this is our last Chapter. It takes place in the future! It is told in __**Jessie's**__ perspective! THANK YOU FOR ALL UR REVIEWS AND PLEASE LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!_

_**Kristy's Galactic Idea**_

**Fourteen Years Later.**

The light of the sun is different on the moon... it seems closer, though I don't know if actually orbits closer than Earth. I think it's just because there's so much light here... so much goodness. Dawn would say it is the Earth mother singing her sweet, sweet songs to us. I remember when we all started getting our periods, Dawn would get angry if we got annoyed. "It is the beautiful call of the moon Goddess!" she would shout, "Pulling all females together with a tidal wave of womanly blood!"

I still don't like my period but it is here on the moon I discovered freedom, so if there is a moon goddess, I'm thankful. After years confined, mute to a wheeled prison on Earth, able to see but never call out, I am fully rehabilitated thanks to the atmospheric differences here, as well as other advances in medical science.

It's so strange, because we've all ended up here. Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Claudia, Abby...Even Mal and Karen. It makes sense. For so many years we thought that Mallory had died at night...I know that I wasn't the only one who felt safest and best once the moon came out. It was the time of memories.

I suppose it was only away from earth's gravity that allowed us not to be be pulled down from the weight of our memories.

Of course, the eerie light of the moon has illuminated new truths about ourselves. It's funny that I was the one who lost the most-- and yet, now it is Mallory, who thought she had gained everything that night she left Stoney Brook behind, hidden in the backseat of the Johannsen's station wagon, as their Spanish exchange student Jorge drove her to New York, paid for his silence with babysitting money.

But now? Now it is Mal who finds herself in chains.

The moon is a place of great divide. There are those of us who chose to come here to make a new start and those of us who were forced to come here. Mallory has been transferred to the new high security prison on the moon. Claudia, too, was forced to come here. There's an extremely ritzy rehab clinic that is very hush hush. She's here, while Cam Geary sleeps around on earth and the nannies raise their son. But to think of Claudia and Mallory makes me sad. I'd rather think of those of us who chose to come here. Like me, and Karen. After all, Karen was the one who truly developed the idea of a moon colony while at NASA.

It was Kristy though, who got us all here. It's very hard to get approved for moon habitation... unless you're a criminal. It's a big joke back on Earth, the easiest way for a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen to get to the moon is to stop being one. But with Karen being the U.S. Commander of the Moon Colony, Kristy was able to convince us all to come and get us approved. Another great idea from Kristy-- a galactic one at that.

Of course, there are other ways to get approved. The social welfare programs of the moon are immense-- if you sign on, your lifestyle is paid for by the government in exchange for work. It's very attractive to single parents and people wanting a new start... which I guess was all of us. Even after Mallory's trial, I don't think we ever truly began again... not after that night.

I still think of it as the night that Mallory died in my head. I wonder if everyone else does too? I suppose I could ask. We still see each other, after all, for dinner parties and whatnot. The social circle on the moon is very small. People I would never hang out with on earth, such as Mary Anne Spier who is here so that it is certain that she has enough support to raise her 14 year old triplets is one of my friends, even though I'm a dancer and she's a check out girl at one of the cafeteria's.

We've all found a new start-- except for Mal. It's such a tragedy. We thought once she was acquitted for insanity and released to her parents, well, with enough love and good friends, she could get better. After all, we all helped her through mono!

But things didn't get better... they just got worse. Mallory murdered all sixteen pikes.

John and Dee. The triplets. Nicky, Vanessa, Margo, Claire. Edna and Edward. Mallory Two. Zelda and Moppet and Olga and even the smallest Pike, little baby New One.

The trial details were awful. Dee hung by the neck with a sparkly pink boa. Vanessa choked to death with an off the shoulder blouse. The triplets jabbed over and over with thousands of earrings. The thing with the ponies. How she ate Mallory Two alive screaming that there would only be one... well... well, it's not hard to see how Mallory ended up on the moon, where they only send the most dangerous and incorrigible members of the prison population.

But I try not to think of that. I try to think of success stories instead. My walking and dancing. Dawn getting off drugs and becoming an expensive call girl, rather than a streetwalker. Janine getting a good job as a chemist on the moon, so she can provide for little Claude. See? Some teen mothers make it.

And Kristy? The moon has made her come alive. Her life was a void of nothing after Andrew's kidnapping and losing the BSC. With no real family anymore, she had nothing to focus on, nowhere to put her efforts in. Well, we're proud to say she's now the assistant coach for the Moon's first pro baseball team, the Moon Meteorites.

The success was a comfort as I stood in the landing bay of the moon station, watching the ships land. Stacey was coming back to us today. After all these years, she finally became a model... I guess she meant it when she said she wanted to just be a kid after that break in middle school and she might go back to it. Well, she has. You can still eat cheese pizza on the moon and weigh less than you do on Earth!

Unfortunately, I found myself staring at the prison transport that was carrying Mallory.

She frightens me. Abby, the psychiatrist that the moon assigned me when I moved here, tried to tell me that I didn't need to be frightened of Mallory. That it is safe here, even with on the same planet as me. But I find myself looking away, trying to talk to Logan, my husband. We've both been seriously hurt, whether emotionally or physically, by Mallory and we were able to bond once we got to the moon.

Of course, with Karen as commander, it's hard to be scared... and at times easy to be. It's not her fault. She has to rule the moon with an iron fist. After all, we're alone out here in space. It would take a long time for reinforcements to get here if there was an uprising. We all knew we were relinquishing even some of our most basic civil rights when we came here.

Mallory kept trying to wriggle away from her guards. Karen ordered them to begin using a taser on her and when they hesitated, she grabbed it from them and did it herself. Karen isn't afraid of anything. She has already told me she will protect me, that I am the star of the moon.

Sometimes she is the same old Karen, but we have seen her in more... eccentric moments. She likes to laugh and say she's still a Two-Two. Two planets, the Big Planet and the Little Planet. Once a scientist told her the moon wasn't a planet, it was too small, and she slapped him. "My mother's home wasn't a house either, it was a filthy shack in a bad neighborhood, but it's the sentiment, you fucking dolt! I AM SPECIAL! I AM SPECIAL!"

We never saw him again.

We never thought about it. But it's true that Karen's mother's house was in a bad part of town. I didn't even know until I was older that there was such a thing in Stoney Brook. But my parents never allowed Becca to walk over there by herself. They always drove her. And the conversations that I overheard my parents talk about when the big Brewer custody battle started begin to make more sense.

But we have to focus on our happiness here. Since the moon colony is so small, unless you have a service job like maintenance or science, you have a lot of free time. I should be thankful... but I got sick of having time on my hands when I was in my prison of paralysis.

Logan tries to encourage me to rehearse all the time, to enjoy my limbs once more (he certainly does), to experiment with anti-gravity. But more often than not, I find myself watching the ships or still gazing at that moon. I visit Claudia a lot... she's still a trend-setter here on the moon. The last time I saw her, she was wearing turquoise Indian jewelry, a camouflage thong on the outside of pink spandex pants, green ballet slippers and no shirt!

...I'm not entirely sure whether the not wearing a shirt was purposeful or not. Sometimes she's pretty out of it. But then, that day she seemed good. She talked to me about some art that she had painted, showed me the latest picture of her three year old Leonardo and informed me that Cam was sleeping with Cameron Diaz, according to the tabloids. So really, she had her head in the game. I suppose next season I'll see models without their shirts in the next YSL show.

Mallory's screaming something over there. Something about it being all Abby's fault. I'm glad that she's the only one who thinks so now. Even Kristy's apologized to Abby for all those years of shunning. Abby seems really happy now. Quiet and never puns anymore, but she still seems happy and fulfilled.

I often think of how Abby came to see me in the hospital so often. No one else really came. I can't blame them. It was hard for everyone, I'm sure. Traumatizing. We were all so young?

And besides, we're together now on the moon. No use being mad about the past? And I'm happily married. Logan wants a child, but I've been firm with my no. I had enough of children as a babysitter and then, when I lost so many years of my life, well, I just want time for me.

It's really very sweet how we're all together again. And we seem to be happy. Stacy and Mary Anne stayed together. The moon illuminated love for Dawn and Kristy too. And I found my Logan. I wish we talked about things besides how much we hate Mallory, but you never know. And sometimes it seems like Commander Karen has an eye for Janine the Brain! I don't if Janine returns it, but, well, Commander Karen usually gets what she was. Heaven forbid you make her anything but "gigundoly happy". A "boo and bullfrogs" from her theses days usually means someone is getting disappeared. But who knows?

Really, the Moon is a great place. We're all happier now (except for Mallory). And we deserve our happiness. After that night… that night everything slipped away from us (I still remember the screaming, the car careening around the polls, the crying… thinking Mal was dead… how everything changes in a moment). Yes, after the night we lost everything, it's nice to be in a place where we can reflect, join hands, eat meals together again. Where we can know…even with the bad… that we're finally in a place to enjoy… all… that we've… gained.


End file.
